Brewster facing more buffeting as he fails to find answer blowing in the wind

Published on Saturday 17 January 2009 18:33

Hamilton Academical 1 Mensing 39 pen Inverness CT 0

IF A manager loses football games he will be under pressure, said Craig Brewster last week. It wasn't a statement of Dalai Lama-style enlightenment. If his team loses seven league games in a row, sinks to the foot of the table and falls six points behind the team expected to finish bottom – Inverness Caledonian Thistle's lot after defeat at Hamilton yesterday – then enlightenment for any manager might prove elusive. That's the position in which Brewster finds himself.

At the end of a grim encounter that was a tie in all but scoreline – the home side just happening to get a penalty Simon Mensing fair enjoyed burying – a chant rose up from the away support for Brewster to f*** off. A couple more defeats and he probably will be told the same, in business speak of course, by his board. With Hearts, Celtic and Dundee United next up, those over-the-edge reverses could well be in offing.

Brewster gave big licks to the "excellent second-half response" of his side in "horrendous conditions" yesterday, but accepted "we need to score" to avoid more horrendous point-dropping. He cursed the needless concession of a penalty that handed the home side a telling advantage but knows it was decisive because he doesn't have a potent striker to his name. "We know we are short, where we are short and it's my job to change it," said the Inverness manager, believed to be chasing two forwards.

It might gall Inverness that promoted Hamilton are growing into their Scottish Premier League status by largely becoming the new them. The latest success for Billy Reid's side was once more a points-scavenging exercise from meagre rations. That used to be a hallmark of the Caledonian club. "We didn't play well in the second half, and maybe they deserved a point," the Hamilton manager said. "I don't know if they pinned us back, but that is our fourth clean sheet in a row at home, we've taken the full 12 points in that time, so we must be doing something right".

Not much to speak of in a disjointed first half. The scouts from 22 English clubs – including Portsmouth and Wolves – believed to be there to assess Hamilton wunderkind James McCarthy would have had little to report from an afternoon in which the other James, McArthur, was more prominent and both weren't averse to brown trouting it under challenges.

Inverness, meanwhile, have been brown trouting it as a team these past two months, since their last victory on November 22. Brewster's briskness in the January's transfer window was supposed to be transforming, with four new players recruited. Two of those, Filippe Morais and Pavel Mihadjuks, appeared yesterday. Initially OK, they seemed to be sucked in to the generally indifferent sort of play that has left Inverness three points adrift of second-bottom Falkirk.

Referee Brian Winter was spot-on with his spot kick after Grant Munro, albeit faintly, caught Joel Thomas seven minutes from the interval. Mensing's conversion high into the net was the one hit of genuine value in the opening half.

On several occasions following the interval, Inverness were seriously luckless after making inroads deep into the Hamilton box. Yet long passages were again as dour as the opening skirmishing. It didn't help that a spectacle-destroying corkscrew wind threatened to give way to a storm. On this evidence, Brewster better batten down the hatches for a force-10 buffeting.